The following description relates to prognostic health monitoring and jam detection for use with an aircraft and, more specifically, to prognostic health monitoring and jam detection for use with an aircraft with electronic torque transducers.
Current secondary flight control systems (SFCS) of an aircraft operate by transmitting torque from a power drive unit (PDU) to actuators that are distributed across leading edges of an aircraft wing via torque tubes and from a PDU to actuators that are distributed across trailing edges of the aircraft wing via torque tubes. Individual actuators contain a mechanical torque-limiter (TL) device that limits an amount of torque that can be transmitted along the torque tubes and can be tripped due to various causes such as internal or external jams that cause input torque to exceed a predefined threshold. Once the aircraft is on the ground, the mechanical TL devices are inspected one at a time within the corresponding aircraft wing until the individual actuator that tripped is discovered and reset.
No early warning is given, however, for cases in which actuator failure occurs or is likely to occur. The lack of such early warning can lead to aircraft-on-ground (AOG) issues and higher required spare actuator counts.